Frederic Ewen (1899-1988) was an author and English professor. He was born on October 11, 1899, in Lembert, Austria and immigrated with his family to the United States in 1912 and became a naturalized citizen that same year. Ewen graduated from City College of New York in Manhattan, New York in 1921. He attended Columbia University in Manhattan, where he received a Masters of Art in 1925 and a PhD in English and Comparative Literature in 1932. He taught English at City College between 1923 and 1930 and then taught English at Brooklyn College from 1930 to 1952. He married Miriam Gideon in 1949.

Ewen was active in many progressive causes in the 1930s and served as advisor to a student Marxist society and participated in the New York Teachers Union. In 1952, Ewen and Gideon refused to testify before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, also known as the McCarran Committee, and both were forced to resign their positions at Brooklyn College. In the 1950s and 1960s, Ewen organized lectures and theatrical presentations with Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and John Randolph in which Ewan lectured on a particular author or theme, and the actors read excerpts from relevant works. Ewen died on October 18, 1988, in Manhattan. In the 1990s, the Frederic Ewen Academic Freedom Center was established with financial support from Ewen's nephew, Herbert Kurz. First based at Brooklyn College, the project was relocated as the Frederic Ewen Academic Freedom Collection at New York University's Tamiment Library.